TRH pt 5: The Crossing
by teddybowties
Summary: Passersby, and... the middle end of convergence.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: Candidate For Bodice

Tumbling tumbleweeds.

That's what they've been reduced to.

The Master's boyish Flesh avatar drifts in a special place in time.

And space.

But that's all right. He has a white, warm, disagreeable cloak made of drippy stupid person.

The Doctor's own liquidating, mindless Flesh has drawn around him, like a blanket.

It's not warm at all now, really. Rather a bit like an ice lolly.

He is rolled in a ball, see, wrapped in a very cold almond paste man's idea of an insular, he himself being much the warmer as they drift in the cold of space. It is getting cold inside though. If they do not find shelter soon, the Flesh Doctor's now-frozen form will crack and shatter from keeping a round shape around the heat of the Master's Flesh.

Leave it to the Doctor to admire the quirky physics of a living snowbank enough to mimic the reactions involved on the fly.

If Koschei the Master's hands ache like little thin reeds from the cold, Koschei's toes feel like the benchwarmers at a C game.

Inside his cocoon of Doctor-flavoured almond paste, the Master he sighs.

Alone, the Master of All, he tumbles, with this oldest and now completely brainless companion, hugging him out of habit, a white ball skipping merrily from chronotic wind to chronotic wind in the cold sanctity of the Vortex.

Sanctity. What a word to come out of –his- mouth.

"You know, Theta," he murmurs to the dormant Flesh, on whom the only thing left of a face are twin suns of ice green eyes staring sightlessly back at him like the inside of a behelit, "…you'd think we'd have packed some Jelly Babies. And I see no corsets. What gives?"

But it is just then that a flicker sharply shimmers over the walls of the Vortex now, humming along like a predatory toothy fish with prospects as it shoots through and over and under and comes out a hole on the other side of the temporal tube, swimming along.

A woman's white head breaches the slit in odd repose, giant and wide like a fluttering salmon in a silky stream. Silent and solid. Motionless.

The rest of her soon follows, first a milky elbow, then a shoulder carved of cream. A bodice of nude breasts and fluid torso. Legs that taper to a bent point like the broken tip of a short wave radio antenna. Above the lines of sculpted navel, thoughtful fingers tented in repose cover something small, sharp and hidden in their palms.

A ship, then. But whose? The Master can only guess, because the Doctor's Flesh is incapable of relaying any messages to him now. It's gone completely to sleep. He's using his psychic abilities to see; best not to dwell. They suck, compared to the Doctor's. Although, he's always fancied his hypnotism prowess…

As he rambles on inside his head, the white, blank Michelangelo eyes of the solitary Fortuna slide over the tiny spot of Flesh. Her arms reach out for them.

Her mouth opens to breathe them in.

There is a woman in the mouth, waving from between the singing teeth. A woman in a corset.

A lavender corset.

And a mess…no, a mass of white hair, tied up in some kind of bird's nest bouffant.

Is it…

It is.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Satie's Embryos

Rassilon shifts on his cot.

The swimming waves of people walking several floors overhead trickle on and off, in relaxing tedium, like a tea ceremony.

But when footsteps arrive far closer to his door, he does not feign surprise. He merely waits, mourning the rise and fall he wants to hear, and delighting in the feet that instead cross the threshold to his tiny infested gaol apartment like two thudding sprites in the half dark, half light of the dimly lit prison dungeon hallway.

"They've even given me my old cell back, how thoughtful of them," he calls out to his visitor, crunching an empty bag once full of jelly babies under his foot.

"I've talked them into letting you out…" a familiar voice muses from behind two blue eyes crunched into nothing by long-spent years. The man's gaze mirrors his own in those subtle, simple ways of forgotten men meeting over a friendly game of stakes. "… not only because they seem to require our combined presence, but for the small fact you make the best coffee."

"They were bound to need me at some point, these little hypocrites of ours," Rassilon quips to the guard, reaching down to pick up the empty jelly baby bag as the clink of keys resounds through his musty little space.

He hands the bag to the obscured face of the guard, whose long hands are on the door handle, and says, "Might I have a refill? It was a pleasure to find that someone had a stash of these… I must thank whosoever it was, when this latest crisis is over."

A nod of yes from the wiry spindle of a guard, and then…

Jack Harkness laughs as Rassilon takes his arm and worms up the steps with him. For some reason, an image of the guard dancing about like a mad rabbit comes to mind.

The slim guard follows, a peek of light brown curls peering from under his helmet as he ascends behind them, his long, mad, heart-shaped lips pinned up by corners given only to the wall.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Little Boy Flew

"It's simple really," the Master says flatly, rubbing the ball of squirming Flesh between his fingers, "…when you think of it in this way, he's like an overlarge pet boogie. You just roll him back and forth, like so…"

The ball of Flesh squeaks in audible annoyance and melts into gooey liquid, attempting to escape the Master's smoothing fingers.

"Oh, leave him be, Koschei!" says Flaminarixodaparcaftion as she struts long hands through the Master's jambalaya blond hair. "There's dirt in your hair. Do you want a shower? Or do you want to see him first? I asked you once already…"

The Master sighs and grabs her bum, to which a silvery a-line strapless gown is now fitted quite nicely indeed, and so soon after the corset she greeted him in.

"Shut up phone sex, I'm deciding."

"Stop being vulgar."

"Stop being so damn attractive. Ungrateful whore."

"Well, I guess you could visit him later. Rosette informs me he's sleeping just now, anyway."

Did she just dismiss him? God damn it. She's just like her mother! Father. Birth-giving parental unit.

"Thank the gods for that. I thought he'd never give me any peace."

"Shut up and kiss me you uncouth idiot."

"Stop ordering me around, or I'll make you regret the day you were…"

Born. Hold on. Did she say sleeping?

The Master knows better than to assume anything, with him.

Her head whips around as well, meeting his chickening gaze and raising him a querent, eggy visual.

"Did you actually go in the room, and see him? I mean, have you lately, Flamina? Seen him?"

"I haven't seen father since he got here."

"And when was that?"

Flamina sets her finger to her bottom lip, which puffs out silently then retracts like the quick steps of a water strider.

"Forget the shower. We should check. If anything happens to Daddy or…you know, Auntie will be furious with him."

"And so will I." the Master mumbles spitefully, breathing in the violet scent of Flamina's white maiko tresses.

Her hands reach for his; they skip down the smooth gang just as the white door slides open, heading for the deeper recesses of Rosette's innards.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: Koizumi, Chiharu, Kotori

"What is it, River? Is it the Artifact?" Borusa quails hoarsely, standing upright against the spiral winds of the now-dissipating temporal storm as they recede down the cliff.

River Song looks up; her fingers garble on the shiny, pill-shaped object long and large and rounded in her hands while she checks it absently for catches, like a Chinese box.

Then, as she looks at Borusa shivering and tall at the cliff-top, she says, "You know, I don't mean to sound like him but you should really get down from the precipice; we don't know if the tear they entered is keyed to contact with the object or not. Best to come away from there."

Borusa shrugs her off with white bare shoulders, lifting one albino deer claw to the bottom point of her crystal head as though grasping her chin in thought. Soon she turns, and pitches her senses down the steep cliff, where the slightly-sunken floating tree, pulled in by the residual forces of the gravity well, is bumping away from them at venerable speed. She says, "Judging by the fact it's still in your hands rather than down the cliff, and the further fact that we are still standing, I suspect that is not the case. Besides, I rather feel safer here, as though whatever caused the storm has ceased for good. And isn't that an odd thing? I don't….know why I said that. Never mind."

River stares at her, peeking for a moment, before catching herself. Then she casts her eyes away and smiles down at the silvery case in her hands, saying, "You know, I'm already getting a signal. Whatever it was blocking our sensors, you were right; it's gone now. We should call ahead so we can rendezvous with Jack. Borusa?"


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Annecy and the Lake

Roda Palfour watches the rise and fall of his land as it breathes.

He takes into himself the sound of the chalcedony surf as it rubs hard against the greyish, gold-flecked soil-sand of Ansypporus' only island shore, where situates his little monastery among tall rock strut trees of jutting chocolate granite. A hand brushes his shoulder, as if the wind has thoughts, too; he moves to go inside, shuffling in nicely starchy robes and naked bird feet toward the wide window of doors which lead into the home of his sanctuary. His, he tells himself… The Student would have something to say about it.

He ambles down the central corridor, looking into the others' rooms without turning; his eyes are on either side of his head, after all. His movements draw a few flutters from behind this intricate wooden screen, a nod from a shadow hidden behind a gold-papered dressing divider. He moves on.

Like a key, the path spans out to left and right; behind is a given. But the future, now, the future is flat. Either left, or right. There is no more middle, in some sections. The eating area, though, that is quite large and accommodating, with its pillowed stone benches and the lion birds that come to feast with the lot of them on certain of the darker days of late bintai and early sprinjjiia. The Student calls them Winter and Spring. These too, are nice.

The lion birds, Roda thinks, were called Fu once, long before he was a child. And they had no wings. But they are not here to-day. And the monastery's pleasant eating area is not his destination.

Roda takes the left, spiraling around a key-shaped corridor of dust-bathing rooms, open to allow the grit to filter into fold and feather. He passes the comfortable stone stalls and their curtains, passes the second row of wetrooms for rare and ritual waterbathing, to arrive in the center, behind the great column he met when first he made the choice of left or right.

There is a small-handled door, made of time-tasted green painted timbres; it is nearly the only thing of bright color within this building place his Home. He smiles, and reaches for the door handle.

As he opens it the width of a fledgling's toe claw, a sleepful voice from the pillows and rugs piled beyond the shadow of the doorway asks, "And what was on the right? I can't remember."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: The Practiced Overture

'So, my friends, Pasmodius is blissfully absent, so at least we shall be availed of his whinging for the moment of your timely return," Rassilon murmurs softly into the Citadel-to-Shuttle comms as the metal bead that is the interplanetary shuttle teleports smoothly into the bumping fracas of the teleport bay. "Step out of your Flesh, and then come out from the cabin- we await your update of our data on the situation."

The little bead grows to size like a hungry droplet, drawing smaller breaks of water to itself before finally materializing completely. The door melts down both sides, becoming an apparent line to the left and right as it writes itself in the shiny metal of the shuttle's hull.

Jack Harkness is standing slightly behind him, waving languidly as the occupants of the shuttle's cabin file out toward the small, cloistered crowds of on-looking Time Lords like querents to the social offices.

"And it seems we have two fewer members of our little troupe, as well. What happened to Benjamin and the Master, River?" Jack asks, leaning on a column near Rassilon's shoulder with his foot up, owning the wall.

River looks up as she walks, holding her prize up for everyone to see, while Borusa wanders behind, her little blonde head bobbing as she finds eyes to meet and gazes to align herself with, out of habit.

But River can tell; her mind is elsewhere. A small smile crosses River's lips as she thinks about what must be going on in Borusa's mind. Then Jack moves to greet them.

"Emily…" Jack says with a grin, holding out his hand and keeping his left boot heel tilted into the floor.

"Steven…" River mutters, narrowing her eyes and adjusting her hips a little so the right one bears just a bit more weight.

"Now that the niceties are out of the way…" he adds, curling the edges of his mouth in a most unflattering way as he resizes her sturdy curves up, "Where is he, Miss Pond?"

Rassilon's ice blue eyes are a bird's as he searches their stilted, pensive body language for information, anything, about what has happened, and what will- he knows what is happening now.

Then, just as he expects them to, they squirm into motion, flying at each other, guns to each other's foreheads.

"Catshark fur," he murmurs flatly, cocking his head, "…has never flown so fast."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: On the Comforts of a Pyramid-Shaped Tent, Part One

Flamina looks at the Master.

The Master looks at Flamina.

They both, then, respectively, look at the only other door between them and the hallway which promises the desired location within Rosette's hull.

The Master shoves. Flamina pushes.

Flamina finds her shoulder in the door.

But it's the doorframe, really.

Smash.

Crunch.

Ah yes, a crunching.

"You fractured my shoulder, idiot," she murmurs, crashed as she is against the doorframe leading to the outer hall, which in turn, eventually, will lead to the Doctor's Zero Room.

The Master, leaning into her, is just as unpleased; his nose has shifted by means of her fist quite a sizeable ways to the visual right, just enough to give his face the approximation of a heavyweight boxer's sterling, empty gaze, the dark eyes full of ribbons of brains and the weight of obols. Their importance to someone.

"But my dearest Flamme, you broke my nose." He rubs his eye with a free hand. "In any case, let us continue down the hallway; I sense a skedaddle in progress."

The shoulder archs up, then back; lots of little cracks are heard as they walk.

Soon his long hands are on her back, soothing up her muscles with gold flecks of light that seep into her veins.

"Precious my flypaper, we should get further down the hallway soon," she whispers, feeling a cold tingling arise beneath the knitting bone.

She reaches up to pull his fingers away and adjust his nose, her fingers glowing.

Krik-krak.

Their eyes meet over the flow of blood from his bruised septum.

"Excellent riposte. But what now, Candy Love?" he asks, nodding his blondish head down the way, toward an open door, slightly swaying from recent motion. "I, personally, feel I was denied the right to counsel. In any case, huh? What are you…"

Flamina sticks her tongue out in a mess of ruffled white hair and flushed face and vibrant olive eyes, then applies her hand to the Master's chest and pushes.

He stumbles, his mouth opening like a drooling dog after bacon. His hands find the smooth white floor, while his roving eyes study the bum of his escaping girlfriend as it bounces tightly down the hallway, then disappears inside the pyramidal door to the detachable Zero Room in question.

After the clack of her heels stops at what he gathers is a wall, there is a crumpling noise, then a thick, uneven pulling, as if there was something sticky on the back of whatever she took off the wall.

"Let me guess," he mutters, scrambling up to position himself behind the door, "…it's a blue post-it note."

Flamina sighs, holding up the blue paper with the sticky back, "You'd be right. It seems he's flown the coop."

He finishes for her, snatching the blue note and twisting it before his eyes, turning it, examining it with every relevant orifice. Including his tongue.

"Well, he keeps -saying- he's an adult, but yet, somehow I don't believe him. Want to go down to the planet and harass the locals? Again?"

Flamina furrows her brows at him, but then sighs. Her shoulders slump like little piles of sugar.

"Oh all right. He'll be fine for a little while, I suppose. Rosette?" she says, looking up into the white ceiling. "Let's drop back into Kasterborous space for a while, but keep tabs on him, would you?"

A smiling, vague-feminine likeness of a face melts out of the white wall and nods.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: The Left Hand of Harkness

"Ladies first," Jack says softly, grinning white teeth at River Song as she caresses the tip of her other pistol against her plumping lips, holding the gun she's pointing at him with a steady, unblinking fortitude. She reminds him of someone else he knows.

Her husband.

The Ponds. Why, always them? Always them.

Why?

He keeps the grin on. Better safe than sorry. She killed his hero. The man he loved.

"Let me guess? You insist…" she says, almost chirping it as she stares down the barrel of Jack's webley, biting her tongue like she probably would do to a cutout of her husband, "Lucky for you then, that I'm not a lady. I'd say 'Just wait till my husband gets here', but well, he's off doing something important." She winks at Jack, smirking a little with those red, red lips. "Again. What are -you- doing later?"

Jack laughs, throwing his head back just enough so he won't lose precision if he's forced to aim for a closer kill shot.

Rassilon feels content enough to let this all take place, like a catshark who's been tossed a freshly bleeding corpse- of course, River Song's husband won't be pleased; an outcome twice unlaughable, at best. So he scales his voice just so, rising his words through a precise ascension of teeth and muscle and moisture.

"Now that you two have become reacquainted…" he begins, his bright red robes advancing, the flick of fabric going before him like the paddle of low, tight surf across midnight beach, "I'm taking over this shuttle, as I have business elsewhere, tracking down an item of some importance to our doings of recent days. Have a care not to destroy the furniture. I've left the list with Pasmodius; do try not to excite him too much. And Jack," he adds as he passes Jack's face, "Why don't you take your party to that pet informant of yours you were telling me about, the one you kept on Mnrva, in the old basement of the museum?"

River's piqued golden head turns a fraction, but Jack Harkness never stops smiling. His blue eyes, though, glide like glaciers over the ancient Time Lord's retreating form as the red-robed man disappears into the shuttle.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Ten: Intermission, or Gnossienne for Girl and Cabana

The Great Reflectors, the Seven Mirrors of Transport who once dwelt in the bowels of Gallifrey, are looking at themselves, shuffling about in the great grand world.

This museum on Mnrva, they have decided, despite their New Year's resolutions, is an excellent place to muse, if full of a tad too many onlookers. But that is all right.

There is a painting in the museum, however, that whips away the madding, shuffling crowd.

As they stand admiring this painting in particular, the seven silver mirrors are listening now, listening with their silver ears and silver hairs and silver lips and silver teeth, for the resonance of song.

They listen to paintings. To statues. To the breathing of children as they run from exhibit to exhibit, catching glimpses.

But in the painting, only sand, at first; blank white sand.

A beach.

Nestled halfway out of the pool of grains, a wooden structure.

A little shack. There is a white and red ringed life preserver there, hanging demurely from the left side like the stripes of a Christmas candy cane stuck on a tree and waiting for a mouth.

The surf is slow, far out on the black rocks at the edge of the beach.

Wave after wave seems to crash sleepily, like a few tired white dogs, chasing for the last time after a beloved red ball coated through the years by many stinky layers of slobbery love. Time to get a new one.

There is a deck chair out on the strut-walk of the shack, led up to and sanded-dusted, they suppose, by a woman's small feet. There are footsteps to the door, as well, obfuscating things. The woman keeps the shack well-tended. She enjoys it there. She is happy, and happiest not being seen, it would seem.

"A nice, bright girl, that Wil," a man with long brownish hair says, coming to stand behind them. He is wearing a blue baroque tailcoat, with a vest of gold damasque.

As he leans between the seven mirrors, each vaguely humanoid, bald-headed figurine looks down and up at him. Then they part like timid tourists to allow him closer; his fingers slide back into his lace-dipped sleeve. Then, grabbing the end of his cuff with hidden fingers, he raises it to thin lips sensuously rouged, then wipes the etched brass plate beneath the picture, availing it of some greyish grit.

"There we are, I think she's looking happier!" he says softly, standing back a bit stiffly with wet eyes and a smile as the mirrors read the title of the picture off the newly-polished brass.

'The Beach of Nothingness'

The mirrors turn in unison to watch him, but he is gone. They turn, again in unison, to face each other.

And they smile. And they sigh. And they smile again.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: Intermission, or Gnossienne for Girl and Cabana

The Great Reflectors, the Seven Mirrors of Transport who once dwelt in the bowels of Gallifrey, are looking at themselves, shuffling about in the great grand world.

This museum on Mnrva, they have decided, despite their New Year's resolutions, is an excellent place to muse, if full of a tad too many onlookers. But that is all right.

There is a painting in the museum, however, that whips away the madding, shuffling crowd.

As they stand admiring this painting in particular, the seven silver mirrors are listening now, listening with their silver ears and silver hairs and silver lips and silver teeth, for the resonance of song.

They listen to paintings. To statues. To the breathing of children as they run from exhibit to exhibit, catching glimpses.

But in the painting, only sand, at first; blank white sand.

A beach.

Nestled halfway out of the pool of grains, a wooden structure.

A little shack. There is a white and red ringed life preserver there, hanging demurely from the left side like the stripes of a Christmas candy cane stuck on a tree and waiting for a mouth.

The surf is slow, far out on the black rocks at the edge of the beach.

Wave after wave seems to crash sleepily, like a few tired white dogs, chasing for the last time after a beloved red ball coated through the years by many stinky layers of slobbery love. Time to get a new one.

There is a deck chair out on the strut-walk of the shack, led up to and sanded-dusted, they suppose, by a woman's small feet. There are footsteps to the door, as well, obfuscating things. The woman keeps the shack well-tended. She enjoys it there. She is happy, and happiest not being seen, it would seem.

"A nice, bright girl, that Wil," a man with long brownish hair says, coming to stand behind them. He is wearing a blue baroque tailcoat, with a vest of gold damasque.

As he leans between the seven mirrors, each vaguely humanoid, bald-headed figurine looks down and up at him. Then they part like timid tourists to allow him closer; his fingers slide back into his lace-dipped sleeve. Then, grabbing the end of his cuff with hidden fingers, he raises it to thin lips sensuously rouged, then wipes the etched brass plate beneath the picture, availing it of some greyish grit.

"There we are, I think she's looking happier!" he says softly, standing back a bit stiffly with wet eyes and a smile as the mirrors read the title of the picture off the newly-polished brass.

'The Beach of Nothingness'

The mirrors turn in unison to watch him, but he is gone. They turn, again in unison, to face each other.

And they smile. And they sigh. And they smile again.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven: Panoply in Blue

"Knock-knock!" sings the Eighth Doctor Flesh, as he raps a slender knuckle to the inside doors of the Jade Pagoda. To his free hand, which he holds in front of his face like a long sock puppet, he says, "I'll tell you what happened in the cave later, I promise. Now, with luck, Queenie, we've arrived at the precipice. Or at least her mother-in-law's. Shall we about? There's bound to be that storage room somewhere… and judging by the trouble we had getting in here -that bottleneck was something, by the way- it's probably a space/time trap of some kind. Not too conspicuous, or those who monitor the Citadel would notice the blip- especially if it's old scenery. Out the way we go!"

Settling the issue, he thrusts the Pagoda's vestibule open, swinging her great hinges wide toward the left and right walls of the little storage room they've just landed in.

Across the way, a rhapsody in blue.

"My dearest! Is it time for tea yet? Or have they rumplestiltzkin'd you with a ransom tied to the spinning wheel, like in the old days?" he murmurs to the familiar wood of the TARDIS' frame, touching her here and there, running a chaste finger along her squarish chin of wood beam.

"What's that you say, my pet?" he adds, almost to himself, walking humdrum over the silvery floor on his way to the grey, uninspired walls of the storage. He touches those, too; in fact he observes the dust there as it settles into his fingertips and smiles, then frowns.

"You say you can't calculate a way out of here, and they've temporally sealed you inside?"

The Eight Flesh turns again, a flurry of green velvet and questioning gaze and droopy laugh lines 'round the mouth. "Oh, it's been here for a while, hasn't it? Haven't -we-? Well," he mutters, fluttering his hands like a gamboling dandy out of someone else's habit, "…we'll just have to theorize a way out then. You'll adopt us again, won't you? Allow us inside after a long absence? All right, all right- I know. I was gone a good time and I worry you, but I'm here now. Let me see if they took anything. I keep telling them not to put me in traps, but do they listen, oh no, they never listen! Why, just the other day I was…"

He disappears inside her.

The Jade Pagoda disappears inside her as well.

And now, the dust takes notice, rising up to pool in the middle of the room, a fine greyish swirl of not-dust sprinkling itself over everything, but really, just… pooling in the middle of the floor.

In a not-anthill.

Then the TARDIS doors open again, and the Flesh of the Eighth Doctor stands there, staring down at the hill of not-dust.

"And I've been wondering where you had vanished to, as well…" he breathes, careful not to disturb them. "What is it they say? Oh yes," he says gently, smoothing his velvet lapels with the care of a tailor, "The Doctor will see you now."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: Beating a Dead Retreat

It's the Valeyard's comeuppance, all right.

In fact, now he's coming up the stairs.

Frightened Time Lords abound before him in the halls of the lower Citadel, all staring.

They're waiting for him.

…to bite them, perhaps?

…how inanely touching. Although it -is- an idea…

"Well now," the Valeyard Flesh says softly, leaning down and setting a finger to his nose like a gloating, evil Sinter Klaus, "…what have we here? Lambs for the slaughter. But not yet. You're too stupid to see it. You lot have always been that way. Oh it will be sooo good to finally be rid of all these misfit toys. But you'll have to wait a little longer for the final action! So sorry."

As he mentally edits the many speeches he's prepared to amuse himself, the bits of himself that he dribbled so carefully come rolling back to him up the stairs, tripping up the horrified onlookers with a great red mess of swishy stains across the walls and floor like little parasites from a horror movie.

"Where… where is Rassilon?" asks Raskalin, cowering behind Pasmodius' purples.

"Upstairs, downstairs, give a dog a stone…" says the Valeyard, eyeing the shivering masses, "It seems the father figure has left the building! Time to die."

He play-lunges, directing hands and bodies in the opposite of his path as he swings himself wildly, his white eyes joying in the emanations of fear from the Time Lords around him.

The Valeyard Flesh raises his hand, as if to snap his long, squarish, whitish Flesh fingers together; then he rubs his chin instead, making sure to sink the tips a bit into his half-melted plastilina skin. He cocks his head to the side, then says, "Just kidding!" Then he smirks, grinning as the faces flinch and turn away at his every breath, like piles of blood-stuck feathers in front of a fan.

As he punches a symbol onto the Flesh-generated leather strap he's just formed on his wrist and pats the pocket of his new Flesh-generated coat, he sings out merrily, "…it's just no fun plucking sacrificial chicken anymore… in any case I think I'm turning vegan. Ciao ciao for now!"

Fitfully for those staring ahead at the empty space, he is soon gone to parts unknown, in a burst of displaced chronons.

Once he appears aboard his tiny orbiting bolt hole of a ship, he smiles, and pushes the smaller of two blinking red buttons near the control console.

Somewhere on board, a slide hatch retracts, and a flood of tiny metal spheres similar to edible ball bearings floods out, like the powdery spray of eggs from a sea sponge.

"Oh, and here you, go, have a cloud of proximity-detonated chronotic scatter mines…" he muses, as he pushes the ship to planet comm, then reaches to tease the larger red button with his finger before bringing his fingertip up high above it and hanging it there, to amuse himself, "… and of course, because they're time-active, these little Barcelonans will block all time-space signals coming to and from the planet. Ever. Which means no time travel off-planet. You're all going to starve. Goodbye. I won't be staying."

Down goes the finger, and then…

His lightweight, single-passenger ship comes apart to the sound of his cackling, in a collection of loud, fluid bursts like a cooling lava rock, trailing a surprise symphony of nasty little puffball choruses above Gallifreyan space.

One by one, the lights of the Citadel go out as sensors black and monitors flush with static.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Bloom.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Lark Shadow

Slipping from the arms of Kasterborous, Rassilon's little shuttle flanks the ruby orb of a giant red-burning star, then cascades on those solar winds toward a most interesting and unassuming area of space. The screen is flashing the words of the destination he's just input, like a long-abused wound. He'll look in a moment. He already knows what it says.

And Rassilon smiles as the telepathic conduits clutch and wind the continuance of his intention with arms of logic and mechanism, like the reactant, reaching confines of a metal uterus about to expel.

The womb no longer holds him, and he knows it, finally; relishes it even, as his little ship sounds its quiet way through space.

Like a great nocturnal bird, he trumpets through the dark, waiting for morning as he hurtles softly to the former lair of the despot cousin, another creature of the night.

The screen reads:

General Specified Disembark Location: Kasterborous: Exact Specified Through Location: Charged Vacuum Emboitment no. 54667: General Specified Destination: Exo-Space: Exact Specified Destination: the planet Perpetuua: Sub-Destination: the wreck of the Hydrax.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: On the Comforts of a Pyramid-Shaped Tent, Part Two

From the floor of the Doctor's borrowed Zero Room, a smooth ivory dimple protrudes. It swells up, becoming the head of a woman who might have been a bride, once. Long hair echoes down the back, hinting at dark roots that could use a good bleaching. Full, thick eyebrows slide across the forehead, lifting in taut ends above pearl eyes. Her full lips are alabaster plums against the white roses of high-boned, angular, almost-chipmunk cheeks. Giant single pearls hang from the ears; a smile plays in the curve of sumptuous hips that flow into the floor beneath rays of what could have been white silk instead of TARDIS.

"Oh jelly, we're here, then…" the Master whines as he wakes, blearily scrubbing his eyes as he reaches, in a rumpled coat wrinkled half up his back, to touch the cheekbone of his lover.

But Flamina is not beside him, nor is she in the Room.

"Could you tell me where that damn woman is? And why do you look like the goddess Fortuna?"

Rosette, the living avatar of Flamina's TARDIS, snorts at him with an incredulous flair. Then she giggles and wiggles suggestively, pointing to the wall like a sun-bleached, stocky elf queen high on summer wine and travel bread.

From the wall, an old Victorian telephone flutters into being like a liquid butterfly, growing down into the surface of a bobbin leg table that also pools itself out from the stuff of the ship.

The Master rubs his head, then walks over to the table.

He picks up the phone, and imagines he hears Flamina's honeyed voice eyeing him for sleeping in.

It isn't what he hears.

"Not remotely a good morning, beloved," Flamina drones, tapping on the phone so that he can hear the sound it makes flood his ears with after-buzz like a boisterous foghorn, "…it seems someone has detonated a sizeable cloud of chronon mines over Gallifrey; we can't get through."

"Shit," the Master gripes, scrubbing his hands through his blonde hair again as he telekineses his jeans back on.

Then he clomps out of the Zero Room on bare feet like a skinny, slightly clumsy, over-sized hobbit, leaving his tomato-red Flesh-formed converse behind on the floor.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen: The Divine Cavalcade, Part One

"…so what are you buying?" River says softly, wrapping her arm around Jack's and leading him back down the dock ramp to another shuttle.

Jack turns to her and grins darkly again, then answers, "What are you selling?"

Both their thoughts turn to their guns. But then…

"Wait!" calls a small voice from the first ramp.

Man and woman on both sides of the boarding platforms look toward the source of the slightly disembodied noise, only to see Lord Borusa tramping down the gangs.

As she walks toward them, the young bodied Time Lord raises her hand to silence Pasmodius, who is trailing behind her, whimpering plaintive refusals with his waggling wattle.

With a shared smile, Jack and River strain to listen in.

"You are perfect for the job, Pasmodius; you've been here a good deal longer than a lot of the newer council members, and I am set of mind. I will go on this journey, and you will do as I say and lead Gallifrey in my absence."

"I highly doubt that I shall have the time, my Lord Borusa! Why, the Namaste Nerada are missing their shifts again, the new Libraries Assistant has disappeared, and the Sub-Archivist is claiming Argonian Influenza! To say nothing of the…"

Borusa spins around in a flurry of golden hair and reaches to the old man's mouth, skewing a small finger across it. "I highly doubt it's that bad. The Council has reached a tentatively settled concurrence in most matters concerning the Assassin and his unfortunate history, the matter of Rassilon's punishment is tabled for the moment, and you, Pasmo, can do this. It's not every day you get such an opportunity. Carry on as per our usual, and I shall reward your efforts upon my return."

Jack and River are perched atop one another, hanging out the door of the shuttle.

Borusa walks by them, clipping both their ears with a loud pop on the way inside.

The small ship will ferry the three straight to Mnrva, courtesy of someone's presets.

As the shuttle teleports out, Pasmodius swats away the student who keeps touching his shoulder and murmuring idiocies.

"I really do not care, child; go away."

"But sir, it's really very all right- they won't be gone long, Lord Borusa promised us. Let us go back to the Library and fetch the tomes on gardening; we still need to sort…"

Pasmodius makes a yawning motion as he wraps his fingers around the young girl's neck and snaps.

For a moment, he isn't sure if the Time Lords wailing and flailing about are doing so because he just killed one of them, or because he pretended to yawn.

Everyone knows Time Lords can't yawn.

Over the comms, a message plays out, just as his master intended.

'Emergency! Emergency! Communications are down- there is a cloud of…'

Sputter.

Oops.

My my.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen: The Divine Cavalcade, Part Two

River reaches for the shuttle's telepathic console coordinator.

"Hey, Emily, do you know if these shuttles have cloaking technology?" Jack muses, putting his antique-style boots in her way over the blinking blue buttons. "Otherwise, it's going to be hard to land this thing in a civilian area. They'll know we're suspicious."

River scowls at him, favoring the right side of her mouth a bit, like she does with her husband. "If you think for one moment I'm going to enjoy this, then you're right. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, and my husband would want me to make friends with you. He obviously holds you in esteem." Her fingers brush the top of his left boot, caressing the dark tan laces and brownish nanoleather as though her hand were a feather boa and the shoe a mere donation to the cause.

"No thanks, Miss Murder," Jack murmurs, looking away and staring at a panel on the wall, "...I have no intention of flirting with the woman who killed the only man I love more than myself."

"Didn't you say that before? I was sure you…"

"…nope," Jack replies, pointedly popping the p.

In the back of the bus, so to speak, Borusa is glued to the windowed views, her frosty child-face locked in happy conflict with the scenery of Space outside.

"Are we there yet?" she asks softly, her blue saucer eyes fixed on one particular star, out there.

Out there.

"I think he's got another convert…" River says under her breath, smiling at Borusa as she works the shuttle console manually with her hands, out of habit.

Jack moves his foot from the console in dismay, affronted by the admission.

"What do you mean, he? Who are -you- talking about?" Jack breathes, rising a little in his excitement before he thinks to catch himself.

And it's too late, because she's noticed. She's seen him. River Song…

He asks again, hoping.

"So what did you mean? My being curious doesn't equal a win for you. I'm just being sociable."

But River Song just smiles red lips and says, "Spoilers..."


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen: the Tomb with Seven Doors

The first foot he sets on Perpetuua, Rassilon suspects, will be a tentative one.

It's been so long since he was there. The Doctor was there once, he remembers as he reaches for a control panel and pops it, his long hands fiddling idly with a silvery wire there, a red and blue one here.

Or two.

Or three.

Oh yes, Rassilon knows about that. The Doctor killed four living beings there, and saved a thousand more. How like his old friend. How like his new one.

Still, by the time of the War he is thinking of now, the joys of such simple pleasures as solitude had long escaped his mind.

And when his wife had… well, best not to dwell.

Move forward.

Just move.

It is such a funny thing, really; to speak the words to oneself in grateful comfort that a former friend turned friend again had struggled with until a very short time ago.

The Doctor was a poster child for trouble of every sort, baked, deep-fried, fire-roasted, candied, broiled, boiled, chilled or grilled, yet he seemed to come through better, even if he also seemed, in general terms, to be the last to know.

And speaking of through-way traffic…

Rassilon eases up on the shuttle's clutch, having switched to manual during spatial -night.- No day really, now, just an endless night… full of not even the lights of stars… and the reason for that is pummeling the shuttle's sensors now.

A slip of nothing that leads to something is spinning in quincunx there, in space, in front of his humble vessel. Waiting to swallow him.

When everything is aligned, it will consume the shuttle and its occupant, gulping them down its gaping black maw like the judgment of some giant monster from old tales.

But the coordinates are exact; he and the shuttle will exit the petals of an opening flower and realign with the universe on the other side, folded like a paper bird along remembered lines.

It's been a long time he's visited Exo-Space.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen: On the Comforts of a Pyramid-Shaped Tent, Part Three

"Hey Desdemona! So what gives?" the Master quips as he hangs in the big doorway leading onto the control deck of Flaminarixodaparcaftion's TARDIS.

Flamina turns from the sculpted controls just long enough to glare at him, her typical -shut up I'm concentrating- sort of gaze.

"I was right, there was a release of chronon mines into Gallifreyan space earlier this morning. All signals to and from the planet have ceased, spatial, temporal and otherwise. Not good."

The Master blinks at her now short bobbed shoulder length red-gold hair, frowning at her delicious morning ensemble of red half-dress, black cycling shorts and combat boots. "Agreed. Have you extrapolated the cause yet from the remaining data? Alice?"

Flamina taps a button; of course, she doesn't need to, he knows that. He also knows she enjoys the nostalgia of having all those useless flashing buttons, just like her mother. Father. Whatever.

"You noticed! Yes, in the last five minutes, there were three recent signals just before Gallifrey went dark. Rosette?" She turns to the white console board, touching here and there to grow a screen from the stuff of it.

The white material screen shows three colored blips- one marks the location of a silvery shuttle on an outbound trajectory, the second shows a small black single-pilot orbital pod, and a… green, box-shaped bit of fuzz moving back and forth like a pong geek on tournament day.

The Master sticks his finger at the fuzz, trying to wipe it off. But it's on the screen.

He leans in, and nearly snorts himself to death. There's a solid green line, then a little top bit, with a little white dot shooting out of it…

"That's not lint. That's a vintage pixel sprite from Space Invaders. I imagine if we search the area where it disappeared, we'll find residual artron with the Jade Pagoda's signature; she's the TARDIS' escape pod." The Master sighs, then scratches his head. "Fucking fanboy. You let him smoke something illegal in here, didn't you? What was it, gingersnaps? Must be. Or, wait… I bet he got high just off the machine oil…" he murmurs, stabbing a finger at the screen until a smudge appears.

Flamina snorts, too, a perturbed unicorn. "Oh Koschei, you can't believe that. Since when did father need any outside help to be an idiot?"


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen: Heavy Water

"Are you all right now?" little Flamina asks her father softly as she sits in front of him on the white floor of the hallway.

"Did you pull me out, honey?" the Doctor asks, patting his daughter on her little olive head of snowy hair.

The child looks away, down the hall.

"We should go, Daddy," she sings, prancing in place in front of his cross-legged form, casting little dancing shadows over his smooth, chinny face.

Swish.

He stands up, and for a moment, a brushing of something touches his shoulder, flooding over a side of him, culminating across his back like the cascade of water over a falls. He reaches with a quivering hand to flick it away, but the sensation remains there, hovering. Touching. Then he remembers.

Flamina is ahead of him in the long hallway, shining like a dew-damp spring bird in the morning sun.

Now her foot is tugging into the white white floor.

He reaches out to her, waving her on.

Smiling as her small body is caressed by waves of milky marble.

Swish-swish.

The eyes are large marbles on a plate, rolling open- but in shock, not fear.

Her white hair is the last thing to escape his sight.

He sighs and runs forward, his chest heaving as his fingers attain a balcony.

The balcony looks over an entrance hall with stairs leading up through passages not accessible to his immediate area.

"It's okay, sweetheart, just let it happen! Daddy's going to...be along in a… you just… let it… happen. You just… it's okay, it's…"

Swish.

"…only Nature."

The Doctor's voice echoes in an empty hall, but for that sound of swishing.

Sheer surprise forces him to sway a little when he sees the signage on the wall, placed low near the handrail for one side of the balcony.

Two lines, three… all red paint- it reminds him of Tegan's melting red lipstick, that time when the TARDIS was about to blow up, and... Suddenly the wall below the lines is made of rough grey swimming pool concrete where it was white marble before.

The fourth line reads:

Water Level.

It's damp, darkened by years of…

Water.

Heavy…water.

My feet… he realises, as the cold, clear fluid creeps down his trouser leg, drowning his shoeless ankles.

…no shoes. Ah. Of course.

"Well, then," he murmurs, placing his hand over his hearts, "...it won't be long now will it, my little dollop?"

Shrugging once, he follows the left hallway off the main. He then follows the off-corridor to the end of that wing and down, to the top of the entry stairs, swishing his feet through the softly clapping water as it rises.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty: Rooms Full of Keys

"That's the thing though, Miss Song," Jack muses pleasantly as he fires up the shuttle's sleek spherical landing gear with a few button pushes and a blow of air for luck, "The last time I was here, I noticed this place had a chameleon-tech shielded basement… just like my Torchwood. Of course you would know about that particular side effect of frequent TARDIS landings in a single location, wouldn't you?"

River raises her eyebrows as the crew cabin lurches this way, that way; this Jack has an obvious flair for the dramatic, like another idiot she knows.

"Of course," she murmurs drily, "…where do you think you got your dress sense from?"

She grins.

Jack lands the shuttle in a grey area; they can see their destination from the window screens. He turns to his three-man crew and leans into life like a former Forgotten Man, practically singing out his next sentence as he plants himself in the doorway of the shuttle's exit ramp.

"What makes you think he rubbed off on me, Miss Song?" he murmurs, scratching his hair like a freckle-faced boy, "I've been trying to get him to do that for millennia. He's never going to."

River just stares, double-taking it all in. "You mean to say he hasn't slept with you yet? He's certainly got resolve. Just wait him out; he'll come eventually. After all, he slept with me! Finally."

Before she can breathe, he's in her face, gulping her air with silent, closed lips from across the room… and he's never once moved from his place in the doorway.

"Don't go there, Pond," he says, brightly, with a grin that could skin twenty giant size rabbits and a few daleks for the soup, "What do you say that after this we go investigate all the reasons you don't deserve him, eh? The list should be quite… wait… I…"

River Song is watching him now, running long fingers through her golden curls as she works it out. Nobody but Borusa, standing in the background and listening like a mouse, and herself, could know that she was really watching the blue arch of a dying timeline shudder away from the man, like crisp leaves on a fall tree. If she concentrated, she could follow the light as it grew backward, all the way to a planetoid no longer in existence, a planet of incarcerated daleks and encased memories… erased memories, now- an entire universe worth.

Memories of the Doctor.

Did her glorious train wreck of a husband really just pick and choose who got to keep him? She's going to ask him what happened when she sees him again, and then she's going to give him a piece of her mind.

"So, Jack, what was it you were going to say about me? How I don't deserve my husband? Because I did something naughty? The only thing naughty I've done is kiss him and think of ways to get him to kiss me. I think it's… oh, three times, or is it four, now? Maybe more. Depending on which me in which timeline, that is. He claims he can't keep them straight, but I think he's lying, I really do."

Jack Harkness turns to her, staring at her tan, sun-framed face. He glares, then stops.

"You know, it must have slipped my mind. That doesn't happen often. I don't know why I was so angry… there seems to be something pulling at me from the corners of somewhere, but I just can't… ah. Never mind," he adds, patting her shoulder in a loose embrace of fingers before walking down the ramp and strutting across the museum's storage basement to a large, crate-shaped object nearly as tall as the shuttle and covered in a white sheet.

He reaches for the sheet; it flies off in his magic hands, like a tablecloth trick.

Under the sheet, there stands a big box, covered in all manner of mirrors with the shiny side facing away from view.

Jack pats her on the shoulder and says, "Go ahead, River Song; take a look."

Borusa watches from the shuttle door, taking it in like a wizened professor too long at the drink, her irises globes of blue against the drab grey nano-stone of the museum's basement walls, doubtless gaping more at the imitation of classical architecture than the thing in the box.

And oh yes; there is a thing in the box.

A dangerous thing.

River opens the mirrored door, her eyes wide on what she sees inside the box.

There is a chain, a single, quantum-material chain, affixed to the mirrored door.

As she pulls the door open wider, it pulls more tautly on whatever it is inside, ensuring the safety, in all dubious probability, of the one who opened the door.

She peers in closer, unable to help herself- and where her hand lands naturally, near the crack of the door, she finds a small switch, which she flips.

Light fills her eyes and floods the box; bringing the face of something she hoped she'd never see again.

Clink, clink.

Clink.

Clink, clink.

Clink.

The calm stone face of the only Weeping Angel ever to smile at dinner, the one who stole her parents from a graveyard in New York, is staring demurely back at her, from a nest of chain, in a cage of mirrors and light.

Also, like a mendicant stolen from their prayers, a white paper sign hanging around its neck, scribbled in Galactic Common, reads:

ANGEL BOB.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One: A Quellious Siege

"At last, our destination," Rassilon murmurs softly to the greenish grass as he steps out into the sunlight of the Perpetuuan day.

He gazes out across the wide plain, looking for forest, casting himself away to search, for pure nostalgia's sake.

Of course, he needn't bother.

He knows the way to the crashed ship; he's known it for a long time.

He sets to walking north, through the forests, with their dense leafy coverage, far denser than Gallifreyan canopy, but fair enough.

Strange how there were no life signs when he arrived, or before, during the sweeping scans he conducted. Perhaps their huts are lined with lead, then?

He laughs as he walks due northwest- a preposterous notion, and an inordinate waste of time. Still, he knows the truth of his odd joy's timing-that pointless humor is good for making time fly faster. Every soldier knows this. The Doctor, who thought himself the savior of this world at the time of his own arrival, is perhaps, Rassilon reasons flatly with a red berried bush he passes, a man who knows it better than most.

Yet he chose to come here, much as the Doctor had, regardless of any conscious decision. He arrived, after all.

They both arrived.

Here, on this planet.

This place.

Only, there are no more vampires to fight. The Hydrax is long dead.

And the villages should be thriving, even, perhaps, developing primitive space travel capability.

He looks up to the sun, sees the wreck of the Hydrax up above the tree line.

It won't be long, now. And what are a few more spans to a man such as he, who has walked through time? So impatient! He smiles at that, remembering the Other and his pacing habits, his habits of pacing.

"What would you say, I wonder?" he murmurs to the empty air as he approaches the wreck. The castle-like ship, overgrown with so much stone now, it resembles a mountain covered in moss, rather than any sort of ship. Absently, almost fondly as he pushes aside one of the once great starship's moss-hung entry doors, he considers the beams of sunlight that filtered down on his body from the forest ceiling.

He takes several steps inside the green and growing corridor, then stops.

The light has stopped flooding in from the open door.

As if he would not notice.

At his back, he hears the stony lesson of wings and feet chorusing the absence of his gaze, and smiles.

And Rassilon, not one to be outdone by dark corners, smiles again more slowly, injecting a touch of nerves into his bearing, then strolls into the darkness beyond the vestibule intent on his prize; a hummed tune on his lips, because he knows the difference.

… the difference between the flap of shoed feet, the scuff of stone fingers, and the click of a lock.

And he will let them think he cares.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two: Bequest Backup

"We should go upstairs and find that painting Rassilon mentioned," River Song murmurs, stepping back out of the mirrored box and tidying her hair as she shuts the door again and locks it, "…and Jack, I'm glad you aren't angry anymore. I'm also grateful for the chance to speak with that Angel again. So, thank you, sweetheart, really." She kisses him on the cheek, then pats his arse. "That was a perfect present. Do you know who sent it to you?"

Jack shakes his head and sighs as he opens the door at the top of the basement stairs. "There was a white card addressed to you and myself with two Greek letters on it, and honestly, I have no idea who that could be. But, see here? This door should open into the museum janitorial station. The guy I worked with used to come in here a lot to see his lover, this white fleshy jukebox… thing. And he was a plasmavore! Can you imagine?" he bubbles as they pop out the door into the janitorial area, a white half-hexagon lined with cameras and short, round, mopping robots full of cleaner nanites.

"Do you remember where you saw the picture?" River asks, shutting the basement door behind Borusa.

"Hurry up, I don't work here anymore- the janitor bots are onto us!" Jack spits out as he turns to her, rushing them both out the second door and into the main museum entry.

"I remember it was on this… yeah, I'm sure that exhibit you liked was on this floor," he adds, smiling at a passing white octopoid in a green striped guard uniform with a silver half-moon sling-baton on a thin belt.

River smirks, and grabs his bum again as the guard's beady, wet black eye rounds on her, then slips around and avoids them in favour of a slender, long-haired man in green and gold and brown pale-patterned Chinese robes - those robes being the exact style of Mencius the poet, she wagers- behind them, his face turned away from them, and so too, the crowds.

Behind River, Borusa, short and blonde and little girlish, simply… allows herself to gape- she doesn't have to fake anything, and she knows it. She never had time to visit the Museum on Gallifrey…

"Hey, Old Man!"

Suddenly a large yet delicate hand is taking hers, whisking her through the crowds.

She looks up, her diminutive face puffy and annoyed.

It is the long-haired man; his hands are smooth, and long. And squarish.

A gasp catches in her throat before her gaze even touches his face.

His long finger brushes her lips, asking her silence; there is gentleness there- not quite the gentleness of a man who would carry her for metres down a malfunctioning time bridge through the Citadel while she slept on his back, but all the same, it is a gentleness. Of a kind.

"So you know what I am, then? That I am no child?" Borusa breathes, collecting herself with a practiced huff.

The long-haired man smiles a warm smile from beneath his dark, concealing veil of brown hair, his grin the only point of reference she can put the voice to.

"... everyone is a child to me, sometimes- regardless, so many questions, and from you, a young-old little Time Lord! Let us make haste to watch your companions; they will shortly be caught up in something, and I do not want you trampled- stay here." He points a sharp, squarish finger to the painting behind where Jack is now standing with River, and Borusa follows his direction.

Borusa's art starved eyes cannot help but stare at the portrait panel.

The frame is of simple woven gold; the canvas, however…

A winged man, beautiful and naked and effeminate, stands easily on one hand, upside down with his feet up, one leg bent at the knee, the outstretched long toe touching a passing cloud. His hair floats downward from his body in a ribbon of revealing veil. From his upturned womb there issues half a handsomely thin woman obscured by her own long hair, its strands of golden, brown and white. The woman's hair swirls around him like water, decorating his pregnancy and hiding his nethers. Her two upraised arms are entwined and apart, like a caduceus-tree, and the palm of each hand beareth a fruit, one pear for each hand- one fruit bright, one fruit dark.

"This panel is classic; it really catches that Art Nouveau style, don't you think?" the long-haired man whispers jovially into her young ear, "…and I really should be going now! Say hello to The Ship for me- This version shan't be seeing her just yet."

Borusa tears her gaze away from the painting to look at the man's face more closely, but…

"This painting is of that one, isn't…it? And him as well? And that must mean…"

Of course, the man is gone.

She is far too short to see him from this far away. He must be a fast walker.

Of course.

Or… she thinks of the draft from the tapestry over the hidden door to the Doctor's old rooms.

If -he- is here, she thinks demurely, clutching her chest from shock, then it must be soon.

"River! Jack!" she calls, but the two are surrounded by a flurry of octopus guards.

Just then a whisper rides their ears; they turn, to see Borusa waving at them from the other side of the hall.

And just behind her, the line of a door melts onto focus, much like on the shuttle they used to travel here, and to the Cloud.

A hand brushes her shoulder, moving her gently to the right- she slides easily to the right, as if some voice she might obey has commanded it.

"There's only one person I've ever seen who can order her like that…" River says softly, gripping Jack's arm as the guards close on them in a mess of white tentacles and silver crescent batons.

"Rassilon!" Jack says, grinning at River while he ups his volume.

"My husband!" River says, equally as loud.

"And what's all this then, eh? Julius? Quiqui? Betsy? I thought I told you I was in no fit state for this non..sense…" says a soft voice, as its strangely familiar owner, wearing Ming dynasty orange and purple with a kitsune-style sleeping mask over green, squinting eyes emerges from the door behind the painting. "Oh, I know them- they're with me!"

"But sir! I thought you were resting! We wanted to stop these people from causing a scene!"

'And you have, you have, but really now… look at me." Long, squarish hands fly up and down in slow motion, making use of breathing room and hand signs to describe his bulging waist, concealed by a bluish belt tied at the side in a decorative knot, to accommodate his girth. He shivers, then looks around wildly once before collapsing against the doorframe.

"…idiot. Shouldn't have… left the Zero Environment… too far along… for this kind of…reckless stupidity." he chides himself, his voice thready as he touches his forehead and sighs. "Is anyone going to help me? I'm afraid I need a nap."

An octopoid flutters up to him through the air, all thoughts of Jack and River gone as more staff members of various races and heights cut a swath through the lingering crowds.

"Sir?"

"Sir!"

"You!" someone calls unhappily from behind the door, presumably, Borusa reasons, shouting at Jack and River, "… get him back inside the Zero Environment! You two, with me!"

Then another pair of hands grabs them both and pulls them in, just as Borusa reaches round to the other side.

"This is rubbish," she mutters finally after those few seconds of running, "…must do this more often."

She pauses, as much to catch her breath as to catch her sense. She muses aloud.

"Wait, the painting was over on -that- side before! How did it get here so quickly, unless… so it -was- him that…"

Then a hand appears from behind the -curtain- of the door, to grab her, too. A familiar female hand, with two familiar gold rings on it.

And the pass-by is empty, now, until the crowds begin to fill the vacuum, as they ought.

The Mirrors, who were hanging on every word from a safe distance away at a snack stand, look on.

Perhaps they'll hang around.


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three: RE:TARDIS

"Angel, Angel! Thy Byron has returned! I do hope you're agreeable because we've to put the kettle on! I pray it's a D-cup problem… would that I should fear it, but to be perfectly demure, I find the bouncing rather quaint!" the Eighth Doctor Flesh murmurs as he examines his blushing blue bride, addressing himself to the fluid copper walls and the glass and the columns and the see-through. And the steampunk lines.

A rumble from the deep. He's come to notice those, recently. Better for the health and pocket!

"What? Whatever is the matter?" he mumbles, as though always under his breath, pursing his sharpening lips as he flourishes his hands and whirls about the console, being the dervish he is, "…River's always telling me to notice her more. And you, my dear- always you."

"TARDIS voice interface!" he sings out, like a dreamy cloud of good wishes.

…and a no.

A sputter happens, slicing through something in the air.

But stillness, and a clang of 'no' pervade.

"Ah, my hopes are scuttled, dashed, gashed upon the rocks of my despair! But look this!" he breathes, circling round the console once and twice and three times, spinning about again, "…I've the finest anime hammer space ever in my pockets; so verily, thusly, and what have I brought us?" He turns once more, stuffs his long slender hand into his trousers pocket and comes out with…

A large, slim silver hammer with a mahogany haft.

"Why, ladies and gentlefolk, it's a hitty thing!" he squeals brightly, animated now as, in flying green velvet of coat and tails, he willingly applies the conch.

Or rather the conk.

Three times west; one right, and somewhere upwards to the left of him, careful to miss the viewscreen!

If he gives her a black eye, she won't be Pleased.

"We have somewhere to be, my darling rouger," he says softly, less petulant now in manner as he has taken a good deal of it out on the furniture, "… in essence, a hurried entreaty would be most…"

That swift flicker of light behind him causes his tongue to stop wagging.

A hologram in a blue Victorian party dress, beloved to see in her mess of hair and slightly sunken cheeks, sputters into view.

"…dark…"

He squirms beneath the onslaught, stuttering and trying for speech, "What? Wait, what are you… what are you, saying, ma petit four?"

"…complicated…"

"Hello, I'm… is it my name?"

"Hello, I'm… is it my name?"

"…Old dark."

"You… every time…"

"… never time… You…"

With big eyes, he glimpses it, a dark jet of octopus ink in a crystal tide pool.

"Well, there's something we can do, still. He's got us right where he wants us, but we've got each other, my pastry. If we can disrupt this space-time trap enough, send something special out, perhaps get something small out, if not ourselves. We can do this. Together, like always. Let's go then!" Finishing up, he pats her on the side of the console, near the typewriter, then taps the panel beneath with the side of his foot.

The shiny glass pops open, and a… violin pops out, inscribed with the words 'Kaku Inko' on the back of the bridge.

"Canister!" he cries, and a silvery capsule falls into his upraised hand. He touches the smooth wooden instrument, and the violin disappears inside.

A series of sequential clangs erupts from somewhere far off. Obvious Morse code for, "You watch too much anime."

He smiles.

"Yes dear, but I get bored when I can't hear you, sometimes. And it's not always fun to leave the house. Well, open the hatch and fire up the catapult; we've got to send our friend Parrot here into orbit, but first… can we do the thing? The opposing barrier… thing I just thought of? Someone out there will see the flare, and if I'm right, it's those two."

A little light above the words, SPATIAL-TEMPORAL SHIELD NOW ACTIVE, blinks a resolute pink.

"Excellent dearest! Good on you, have it waiting for my signal, there. And tell the Pagoda to synchronize, too; we've got to have hers or there's no getting out of here. I have to be back at the Cloud to retro-position the Pagoda, and… what's that? You've to pretend to be a shuttle? Well, with any luck, the backlash should create a small window for us to do it and get out. Remember that time we snuck between those two stars just to get that special photograph for Rose and were almost caught in the opposing gravity fields? Well, it's nothing like that…"


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four: Look Ye on All Thy Works

Eyes may gleam out of the dark, but how many of them have stared into the deeps of hell and laughed?

Marking his territory with a hard roll of strong, steady shoulders, Rassilon ventures deeper into the Hydrax's innards, rubbing fingers against walls full of old, rotted ivy, traipsing carefully through floors touched with the dust of ancient, pallid mosses. As he journeys inward, he gathers flatly, at least he ought to provide the scuttling somethings lurking hither and about with a nice meal.

Krak.

His foot trembles over a dusty, fragile, now-cracked object. He doesn't have to look; he knows what it is, having been in wars where people lost various body parts often enough.

It's the calcified remnant of a finger bone; the smallest finger, to be precise. This large, once ornate area is where the last vampires fell.

A sudden urge to break into song grips his guts.

He murmurs an old lullaby, softly at first, then belts it out madly, taking the Doctor's examples to heart and finding his own voice inside the song.

He still sounds like a dullard, just like that night in the Other's room, after his wife's… demise, before they had… fallen out. Singing wasn't his strongest point, and the Other had never missed an opportunity to tell him so, all the while trying so desperately to teach him the finer points while sitting on the man's simple wooden bed.

As he recalls that bed, stooping to pick up the finger and crunch it to dust in his hand, there had been one blue pillow, with gold thread.

As he considers the thread of that pillow, a brightness beckons at the end of a dirty, darkening hall, swaying a light back and forth. He knows the way, but just the same, it's nice to have a guide.

"Well, lead on," he murmurs to the setting trap, "…somewhere the liquor's getting cold, and I have a schedule to keep."

So he follows to the end of the hall, the flickering lamp a post of illumination.

He reaches a large room.

The light, produced from an old style hanging lantern, temporarily extinguishes; in its place, a note drops to the floor. He picks it up.

It reads like a comical death notice, in a hand he knows well:

"Hello, Rassilon! Welcome to the bonus round. My old cloak is still clutched in the old bat's cold, dead hand. Why don't you come down here among my pets and find it?"

Rassilon grins. He slips his foot inside the handle of the lantern and kicks it out, so that the light flutters over the droning pit hidden beyond the cliff face.

Then he smiles on them all, all those stone faces, waiting.

Waiting for him. Waiting to devour the residue of his chronotic signature. And his would be a feast, indeed.

Rassilon cracks his neck from side to side. Rassilon sighs. He has no intention of dying here. But, in accordance with the Doctor's blue note, his Flesh has other plans.

Then Rassilon takes a running leap, cutting a swathe through the Weeping Angels, running for the Fist with the Robe in it.

Almost there. He brings out the White Pyramid, clicks it once. It's counting down.

Almost… there. The eyes and claws and fangs are closing in, like a water drip.

His hand, made of the white stuff of the Flesh, becomes the Stellar Manipulator, and with it, he grabs the Robe, and crawls up the giant hand to make a perch and watch the show.

Then he ties the Robe around the Pyramid, which disappears as a bundle, then hits a button on the Flesh Manipulator, takes a deep bow, and dive-rushes the crowd.

The boom ricochets for three light-years, throwing his orbiting shuttle, where his body resides, out of orbit and back toward the CVE.

And the Other had said he couldn't throw a party.

The little troll.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Cockle Shell Brigade

Soft bird's claws lift him up; somewhere high above, the call for his attendants resounds again.

"…ther Roda!"

"…he?"

"…collapsed just as we…"

The claws are gentle, gray blobs dressed in monk's hoods. They swerve around him, curling on his folds, addressing themselves to the needs of his body. Fitting themselves to him.

Are they wrapping him in colored ribbons? It feels like a shroud. Is it meant to keep the birds away? No, no, the birds are here, taking care of him. What is it meant to keep away then? Oh wait, he can almost…

Himself. That's always the answer. So simple! A tear leaks from his eye. Why is it cold, when the rest of him is so very very warm and uncomfortable? He manages a sigh, from far away. Those simple sutras binding his arms and legs to his abdomen won't hold the elephant in anymore…

Once, that would have felt distasteful. Now, the shreds of fabric they join around him in their bird-y claws feel like a welcome blanket of sleep. He knows this is wrong, but… that part of him that cares is far away, trapped in a box. With another box. Inside another box.

Still… his sense squirms just out of reach, growing along his lines, thickening his reactions like a broth of stewed donkey meat, 15 years gone and still brewing. He is being wrapped for a roasting. Must be; he feels rather hot.

He imagines he's now got a winged toaster for a head, with the words, 'Curly F. Brace' scrawled on the side in bloodlike, rusty rents. He should stop playing so many flash games.

Yeah, a toaster. His temperature is sky high. His brain, afire. Of course, that flame inside him isn't from real heat, only what could be represented by that burning coal nestled in his thoughts.

And his pregnant body is ready to pop up some cinnamon toast any day now.

But the monks are here; they'll take care of it.

They are taking care of everything, now. And they are still filing in from the monastery on Ansypporus, via the Seven Doors of the White Pyramid. Good that it became active again, since that little blip that made him so dizzy a few moments ago, despite his being in the litter and the Flesh being the one standing in the museum hall. With regard to the Flesh, he just hasn't been quite the same since they separated that day he touched the Flesh in its vat in that secret facility; himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, himself, and I. And I again.

And then there are the Three of him.

Yet, at least now, even the baby is sleeping finally, inside him. Safe. Warm. Free of conflict, gift boxed like a Christmas puppy in an edible, break-away, biodegradable packaging. But soon, even that blessed dreaming will be disrupted, too.

It is the way of things. And very Green.

Let the others deal with it; he's waited long enough for a little sleep.

He's apt to get a bit of that rest the baby's getting, he realises, as Roda's voice, far above him, breathes raspily, "His waters have ruptured; it will not be long; when he gives birth, his entire reality will crash on top of him, if this continues and the objects are not returned. We must attend his needs." The bird monk waves a claw over the Doctor's face, brushing a burning cheek as his long bird face aims itself direct at Jack, "Also, where is the Pyramid? The Seven Doors were unavailable to us for a short while; I suspect tampering, or subterfuge. It must have been what caused the Doctor's present consciousness to fracture, to… diminish, if you will. We will do what we can. But as I told him before, he should have come to us in the Flesh."

Roda gently taps his claw on the Doctor's forehead four times, pauses, and then a fifth. Then a sixth, and a seventh.

Then, at Roda's direction, the litter moves backward into the green doored room, accompanied by three anxious faces, the swish of two distinct Chinese robes, and a procession of bird-men.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six: Quite Contrary

The Doctor is Benjamin Pond.

Benjamin Pond is the Doctor.

Benjamin… the Doctor…

That bastard! But…

He's going to be an uncle!

Still… that bastard.

And… that -other- creature. The one with the unstoppable breasts and golden curls to die for. Well, no one else is going to die for those, anymore.

Pale and panting, Jack takes a step back from the procession, hanging on body-words, like a bat about to sound.

"What did you do to him, River?" he breathes, his blue eyes storming from narrowed slits like tidal waves before a drowning man.

River Song's golden hair stops bouncing. Her hand slips from the Doctor's; the two sets of footsteps in soft boots on either side of the litter cease for a fraction of time, then take up the slow march once more, slowing it further, as if to enunciate this little bump in polished planning. So he -was- faking it; interesting.

"What did -I- do to him? You're the one who…"

But the barrel of Jack's pretty little Webley cuts her off the moment she stops turning.

In fact, it's sticking between her eyes.

"Oh, you lying, theatrical little snot! You -were- faking it…" she replies; but only her snort is indignant- her manner is not. Her fingers play across her own weapon. Then she sighs. "You just wait till my husband gets home. You are sooo going to wish it weren't Halloween!"

Jack licks his lips, savoring the dryness of his flesh as he tastes the whiteness of his teeth on his tongue. Then he says, "Oh, I don't think he's coming."

Come on, you stainless steel rat, he tells himself glibly, the man you love with more than you have is a vegetable and here's your one chance to make soup out of the one who did it.

Bang.

Gunpowder residue is no substitute for kohl, Jack realises as the monks fall back from him like toppled dominoes wrapped in wheaty linens.

There are fine lines of black dust around River Song's face, trailing from the hole in her forehead like soggy mascara. Her white Flesh face is already dissolving, much as a sugar cube in boiling water.

Black and white. That's all there is, really.

But then a hand from the bed raises, uses the edge of the litter to press the rose on that gold, gold ring and slips steely, squarish fingers around Jack's wrist, just as the two Flesh copies of the Doctor in Chinese brocade fall to the floor like rag dolls, their fingers wrapping around three other wrists, a small child's, a woman's, and the wrist of the man on the litter, whose eyes are alternating quickly between darkness and light. His face is a thick blind, burning and hidden.

But the light, fleeing its former husk, flows away in a stream of desperate splendour from the man, away from his eyes, away from his reach, through the ring and down Jack's arm. Jack looks up, startled- but everything is peeling away, like the turn of a page. The light strains toward River, bursting through her. It then courses through Borusa before landing back on the ring, like a little fly, before winking out under the bedridden man's gaze.

The semi-conscious man's wakening face ignores the little light; he begins to smile. His eyes open on the room of people like black bead lenses, focusing dark suns on every naked face. He grins pearl teeth at the crowd and says one word.

Just one.

"Boo!"

To be continued in:

Master of the Two Worlds


End file.
